


I'm not gonna save your reputation

by skullage



Series: not another high school au [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Ableist Language, Alternate Universe - High School, Bottom Bucky, Child Neglect, Explicit Sexual Content, First Time, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-29
Updated: 2014-08-29
Packaged: 2018-02-15 06:25:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2219172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skullage/pseuds/skullage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve has always been the only one that needs saving.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm not gonna save your reputation

**Author's Note:**

> part two of the "not another high school au" series. bear in mind the amount of time this fic took to finish is in no way proportional to its quality. huge huge huge thank you to sunrisebirds for stepping in as a last-minute beta and saving my chapped ass, any remaining mistakes are my own. also a big thank you to everyone who's left comments/kudos etc, you guys keep me strong.
> 
> the song mentioned is death cab for cutie's "transatlanticism", which i was told is the song you play for someone you intend to spend the rest of your life with. originally i made a playlist for the cd of bucky's that's mentioned, but it had too many taylor swift songs. if you like [here](http://8tracks.com/hausofstorms/find-me-in-your-bones) is a playlist that has no relation to this fic, but does have transatlanticism on it, and less taylor swift.
> 
> warnings for some ableist language, terrible family situations, and improbable weather patterns. if there's anything else i've forgotten to warn for and should've, please let me know.

 

 

 

Twenty minutes into the meeting, Steve's phone buzzes with a new message from Bucky. He feels guilty about checking it for all of eight seconds--despite how three of the seven other people in the room have their phones out, the teacher is asleep at his desk, and it's four o'clock on a Friday afternoon--but does anyway, unable to help himself or suppress the feeling that wells in his chest and spreads across his face in a smile.

_**are u busy this afternoon??** _

Sam has taken charge of the meeting, and with everyone's attention focused on him rehashing the finer points of the speech they've been working on for the past week, Steve's attention drifts back to his phone.

_**Anti-bullying meeting right now, nothing after. Catch up?**_

_**u read my mind. come by mine after, got the house to myself all w/e** _

_**bring snax** _

After only two days without seeing Bucky, four since they've been alone together outside of school, Steve's wired on the thought of seeing him again. Between club meetings and training after school for championships and working every other afternoon he's barely had time to catch his breath, let alone hours to while away in Bucky's company and still get enough sleep to make it through another day of school. He only has so much self control and it hasn't gotten easier over the past few weeks, now that he gets to touch instead of just imagine, now that he carries the taste of Bucky's mouth on the back of his tongue and walks around with a permanent blush staining his cheeks as a reminder.

Steve only realises he's zoned out when Sam calls his name, a half-smile twisting the corner of his mouth at catching Steve off guard. "That all sound good to you?"

"Um, yeah." Steve shoves his phone back in his pocket. "Insults, physical harassment, peer pressure, all that." He clears his throat.

"Speaking of peer pressure," Darcy spins around in her chair, chin propped on her hand, "how's the boyfriend?"

"Um," Steve says, "Bucky?"

Darcy nods and stares him down with a kind of dead-eyed curiosity that's intimidating from a freshman. "Yeah, that guy."

"Why do you want to know about Bucky?"

Darcy shrugs. "It's our very own Romeo and Juliet story. We're all very invested." Bruce, Jane, and the other freshman sitting next to Darcy all turn to look at him at the same time.

"Um," Steve says again. He can't help but feel ganged up on with everyone so interested in his personal life. He's used to it, sort of, after falling in with Tony's group mostly by accident and getting promoted to varsity captain, but not when it comes to Bucky, who's always kept to himself. Ever since the party, the first time they were together and seen that way, it's all Steve's heard. He should've known it though, with the way rumours in highschool spread like crabgrass. They should've been more careful. He glances up at Sam to intervene, but Sam's hiding his laughter in his fist and offers no help. "Maybe we should get back to the speech."

"It's alright," Sam says, "That should cover it for today, unless anybody's got anything to add?"

Jane pipes in with an addendum and everyone else starts packing up. Steve collects all the spare pamphlets lying around like he does at the end of every meeting, overhearing Darcy's friend say, "You know they killed themselves, right?" as he goes to shake Mr. Erskine awake. Technically, Erskine is there to supervise the meetings, but he's harmless and likeable, more like a doting chin-whiskered grandfather to the kind of students who have no other sympathetic ear to turn to than the more intimidating figures like Pierce, whose title of Guidance Counsellor seems antithetical to what he spends more of his time doing. Erskine lets Steve's committees use his classroom and vouches for them to do assemblies and fundraisers, and no one seems to mind that he dozes off or the ever present smell of peach schnapps. He wakes with a snort, pats Steve's shoulder, and waits for Steve and Sam to set all the desks back in order before he locks the room behind them.

"Movie night at Thor's tomorrow," Sam says as they make their way down the empty hall. "You in?"

Steve shrugs in non-commitment, hand clenched around the phone in his pocket. "I'll get back to you. I'm heading over to Bucky's now, probably going to stay the night since I bunked off work for the meeting."

Sam gives him an appraising look. "Guess we might've lost you already, then."

Steve squares his shoulders. "Not sure what you mean."

"Hey, I know how it is when you first get with someone." He has a smile on his face like he's remembering, a toned-down version of whatever stupid look Steve has to fight to keep off his face. "Don't sweat it. Spend some time with your boy, enjoy it. It's good for you."

Steve's saved from stammering out another non-response by Natasha, who corners them outside the doors, pushing off the wall where she was apparently waiting. Sam catches her eye with a nod and a _hey_ that she returns easily. She's looking laid back in a tracksuit that matches the figures running across the field.

"Never picked you for Sporty Spice," Sam says.

Natasha shrugs. "I'm adaptable. I can be Scary when the moment calls for it."

"I don't doubt it."

Steve coughs and adjusts his backpack, apparently forgotten.

"Got the thing you wanted," Natasha says, after a pause in which she maintains eye contact with Sam, and pulls a flash drive out of her pocket.

"Thanks," Steve says as she presses it into his hand. "Do you--what do I owe you?"

Natasha smirks like she thinks Steve is cute or playing dumb, but Steve's been on the receiving end of that look so many times he no longer gets offended. "Don't worry about it. I'll put it on your tab."

Bucky warned Steve, weeks ago, after Natasha cornered him with a smile that veiled cryptic threats about the last person who messed Bucky around, that trusting Natasha was fool's work and she'd just as easily steal your passport as give you a hand up. At the time they'd just finished a marathon viewing of _The Untouchables_ Season One, and Steve put the warning down to Bucky forgetting they were in high school and not 1930s Chicago. Still, Steve's big on loyalty, and Natasha's loyalty to Bucky impresses Steve more than her smile scares him.

She saunters off with a pointed look at Steve like maybe she knows what his plans are, and either Steve is just too obvious or she can read minds as well as body language, but either option is plausible.

"Damn," Sam says with a low, appreciative whistle.

"Isn't she dating Clint?" Steve says, adding, "Not that it's any of my business."

"Yeah, but from what Clint tells me and everyone who'll listen, they're not exclusive." He turns to Steve, eyebrows raised conspiratorially. "You think she and Barnes ever--?"

Steve pulls a face. "Please don't put that image in my head," he says, and Sam just laughs. He'd walk away if it didn't mean forfeiting his ride.

"Just messing with you, tough guy." Sam claps him on the back and leads the way to his car. His good mood keeps until he pulls up outside Bucky's house and cuts the engine, brow furrowed in concern, a hand on Steve's arm before he's got the door open. "That's where Bucky lives?"

Steve shrugs. He had the same reaction the first time he saw it, too, and Sam isn't the type to judge, but he's cautious.

"Looks like a strong breeze would knock it over."

"That's where Bucky is, so." Steve wasn't always so unconcerned, but it's different now. He doesn't need to worry so much. Bucky's enough. "It's fine. Bucky's dad is gone all weekend."

"That's supposed to be reassuring?" Sam's expression twists in disbelief but he lets Steve's arm go. "Alright. Give me a call if, you know, the place gets raided."

Steve flashes him a grin and bolts out of the car. He's so close, chest tightening with proximity, that he wouldn't have registered the state of the house if Sam hadn't mentioned it. He sidesteps the loose pile of wood on the porch and the boxes strewn around the entranceway that make getting inside and shutting the door behind himself more difficult than it needs to be. The house has an air of desertion, messy and quiet until Steve gets close to the basement stairs and music floats between the floorboards to greet him, soft and lyrical and out of place.

Steve takes the stairs slowly, boards creaking to announce his presence, Bucky's bedroom revealing itself as if through a camera lens, as if the further down he goes the more things come into focus. Bucky's hunched over a canvas that's laid down in front of him, paintbrush in hand and another in his hair, surrounded by color palettes spread across the floor. Among them, making up most of the detritus of Bucky's personality, are aerosol cans, finished canvases stacked against the wall, clothes, discarded school books, wires and bits of metal with no obvious shape, even a pizza box shoved down the side of his mattress. If Steve was to take a snapshot of Bucky's life, anything other than the moments he drinks in when his camera isn't in his hand, this would be it. Undeniably Bucky.

Even in profile Steve can read his expression from his furrowed brow as he stares the canvas down, but when he looks up it smooths out into a smile.

"Took you long enough."

"If I'd walked instead of getting a ride from Sam, it would've taken longer. I'd never hear the end of it from you." Steve drops his backpack and stands next to the half-finished painting where Bucky's sitting back on his heels, glancing up at Steve with a fondness in his eyes that conflicts with his affronted expression.

"In this heat?" Bucky pushes himself to his feet and the instinctive urge to reach out rises through Steve's body in a wave. It's not a new feeling, not since the first time they went running together, but it's overwhelming like a head rush, as incapacitating as an asthma attack. At the very least it's mutual. This thing they have, where they spend time together and sometimes make out naked under Steve's covers long enough that he can get his mouth on the rest of Bucky's body and his hands everywhere, is still new enough that it doesn't have spoken boundaries yet, let alone a name. They don't kiss goodbye, not in crowded corridors before they separate for classes, not with Steve's parents watching from the kitchen as Bucky makes his escape after breakfast, but that doesn't mean they can't kiss hello.

Bucky tastes of nicotine and Red Bull and it's disgusting, but Steve chases the taste of it to get to Bucky beneath it all, pulling him closer by his tank top. Bucky hums appreciatively and cups the back of Steve's neck, letting himself be pulled and be kissed.

"Hi,'' Steve says, hoping he doesn't look as flushed as he feels. Bucky's fingers are ice against his skin and it's soothing.

"Hey," Bucky says. "If I knew that's what you came over for, I'd've ditched the clothes before you got here."

He's joking, but he's not reaching for Steve's belt. Part of Steve wishes he would.

"Yeah, I'm just here for your body. You got me."

Bucky gives him a suspicious look that's probably meant to be a challenge, a reminder that Bucky isn't as easy to figure out as he seems. Not that Steve needs reminding. Beneath Bucky's cool exterior runs something that makes him keep his distance and holds Steve back. A flicker of it passes over his face before he shakes it off and twists his mouth into a grin, ducking his head slightly under Steve's gaze, and, _oh_.

"What?"

"Nothing," Steve says quickly. They could do this all day. He drops down on the bed, pulls out his laptop and the flash drive. "Come on. I brought over Game of Thrones. You haven't seen it yet, right?"

"Cable's out," Bucky says, a non-answer. He pulls the paintbrush out of his hair and the strands fall to his shoulders, slightly curled and fluffy from the heat.

"You still have cable? Are you living in the stone age?"

Bucky shoves him over on the bed and settles next to him. "Enough with the jokes, play the damn movie."

Steve relaxes into his weight. "You're gonna love it. I might owe Nat my life, so you better love it."

Bucky turns to him, glaring a hole through the side of his head, and Steve laughs until his ribs hurt.

 

//

 

Four episodes and a heated argument about who would win in a fight between Khal Drogo and The Hound later, they fall asleep crowded to the side of a bed that can comfortably fit three people. Outside, a storm rolls across the black backdrop of sky, forcing heat and humidity through the basement until Steve wakes up, sweaty, disoriented, clothes soaked through, limbs tangled with Bucky's.

No rain or thunder breaks the silence but Steve can feel the storm all the same, pressing the air into a vacuum, the pressure and humidity making breathing difficult. Bucky starts when Steve nudges him, trying to wake him as much as move him off. He starts to roll over again before Steve points to the ground-level windows and the lightning striking visible through them.

"Oh," Bucky says, voice hoarse from sleep, "did you bring your camera?"

Steve reaches for his bag as Bucky shakes himself alert and leads the way out. The house is still and shrouded and their bare feet pad across the kitchen linoleum to the back door like thieves. Climbing the roof is easy enough even with a camera in one hand and his head still fuzzy with sleep, feet scraping against the lattice with each foothold. The view from here is as good as any. Steve snaps at the fissures dividing the skyline until the storm curves around the city and disappears.

Bucky smokes a cigarette while the silence stretches, broken only by the noise of the neighbor's tv and a car alarm several blocks over. He nudges Steve with his foot, jerking his head back. "Go in?"

"Yeah." Steve pushes himself to crawl across the roof while Bucky stands to his full height, arms stretched above him. The streetlights cast a glow that turns him iridescent as he sways on the rooftop. Before the crack rings out, Steve's breath catches in his throat and freezes the warning there. The tile shifts, slips, and Bucky goes down hard. He hits the roof with a grunt and a crack that's more ceramic than bone, landing on his side and scrabbling for purchase as he slides down the slope of the roof, tiles giving way beneath his fingers.

Steve starts into motion just as Bucky skids to a stop inches from the edge of the roof, grabs him anyway, his own footing less than assured. Bucky grins up at him through the wild tangle of his hair.

"Well, shit," he says, and, yeah. Steve's thoughts exactly.

Steve's shaky as they climb back down but Bucky's thrumming with energy, eyes wide with adrenaline, pulling Steve by the hand back through the house that's grown ominous after the threat of storms and falling debris, full of sharp objects and blind corners. Steve clings onto Bucky's hand until they hit the bed, mattress groaning under their combined weight, trying to draw breath at the same time Bucky presses their mouths together. The kiss is wild, parched, biting, a desert sandstorm trapped in Bucky's mouth.

"That was really stupid, Buck," Steve says when he can draw breath again, pushing Bucky's hair out of the way to kiss him again.

Bucky laughs, voice strained with arousal, turning the kiss deeper while Steve struggles to keep up. "Yeah, yeah."

"I mean it, that was--god--so stupid."

Steve doesn't realise he's trembling until Bucky stops kissing him, pulling him close to run hands across his back, shushing him gently. "It's okay, it's okay," Bucky says, a hush. "I'm okay. See? I'm not hurt, everything's good."

Steve presses his face into Bucky's chest where his shirt is soaked through and the scent of him is strongest, cigarette smoke and acrylics and wood with an alcohol tang. "Yeah," he says, resurfacing to resume the kiss, "still mad at you for being an idiot, that's my right."

Bucky laughs into the kiss, wrapping an arm around Steve's shoulders, bringing their bodies flush. Everywhere Steve touches is a live current: the small of Bucky's back, the curve of his ass, his strong thighs, and Bucky moves with it, dick hard and rubbing against Steve's stomach through their layers.

"Shit," Bucky says, "you should fuck me."

Steve keeps the rhythm up, slotting their hips together as they dry-hump, and damn if his dick doesn't swell at the thought.

"You really want that?" Steve asks, hand dragging down Bucky's chest until he pushes up under his shirt to find skin that's cooler than the heat warrants.

"Yeah, of course I do. Can't stop thinking about it. Even went out and bought condoms and everything." Bucky's lips are soft and chapped as he presses a kiss against Steve's chin, says, "You don't know," another to Steve's neck, "just how much I," another to his sternum, "want this."

His fingers trace over Steve's stomach, the lightest touch down, down, before Bucky cups him through his slacks. Steve instinctively thrusts into Bucky's palm, gasping at the shock of contact. "Seems like you want it, same as me."

Steve digs fingers into Bucky's back in case his enthusiastic nod isn't agreement enough. He's learned from previous experience that Bucky's ideas usually work out well, at least where his dick is concerned, but a blowjob is one thing, and there's no guarantee he'll last long enough for it to be fair to Bucky. "Whatever you want is good by me."

"Now you're just being cute," Bucky says, "lucky it suits you." He drags himself up Steve’s body until he's on top and sitting in Steve's lap, a heavy, solid weight, real beneath Steve's hands, knees bracketing Steve's hips. He wastes no time in stripping, moving off the bed to ditch his boxers before he's naked and pulling at Steve's clothes, and Steve's too distracted trying not to get his limbs caught to be distracted by the sight of Bucky, the glow from the streetlights hitting all his good angles. All long lean muscle and spitfire, he's not small by normal standards but still seemingly delicate in Steve's hands, deceptively fragile despite how he lives, sliding off edges and pounding on shaky foundations.

They've done this enough that removing clothes is rote memory, but Steve can't help pulling Bucky back in, savouring the feeling of skin on skin, because the novelty never wears off. He has to pause before he gets ahead of himself.

"We need--stuff, don't we?"

"You mean lube?" Bucky laughs, not unkindly. "You can say lube, Stevie."

"Don't be a jerk."

Bucky leans down, mouth brushing against Steve's jaw, breath ghosting across his skin. "Say lube," Bucky says. Steve can hear the smirk in his voice, feels Bucky's legs clench as he bears his weight down.

"That's a dirty move, Buck," Steve says.

"Say it."

"Lube." Steve's proud of himself that his voice doesn't sound as strangled as he feels.

Bucky laughs again, throws the spare pillow across the room to reveal the stash beneath it, a bottle of lube and a few condoms that crinkle in their foil packets when Bucky scoops them up and drops them like confetti on Steve's chest. "Those are for you," he says, and holds up the lube, "and this is for me."

He pauses with the bottle uncapped, smirk slipping at the corners of his mouth. Steve tries to breathe and process at the same time, which isn't as easy now as it is when they aren't naked and turned on and about to--do this--for the first time. His nerves must show on his face because Bucky leans back down to kiss him hungrily as a distraction.

"Relax," he says, and Steve does, sinking back into the pillows automatically. "I'll do all the work. You just lie back, stay pretty."

Everything that comes out of Bucky's mouth sounds like a challenge, even the 'oomph' he lets out when Steve grabs him and rolls him onto his back.

"No." Steve takes the lube from Bucky's hand. "I'll do this. You're prettier." Bucky just smiles. Steve clutches the bottle to his own chest. "So, uh."

Bucky rolls his eyes and takes Steve's hand. "Like this." The lube is cold and greasy on Steve's fingers and drips down his wrist but Bucky's hand is reassuring and firm when he guides Steve down to the soft give of his body. Steve gets a finger in to the knuckle before Bucky clenches, hissing, "Easy," and Steve slows down, easing all the way in just to draw back out. Bucky releases his death grip on Steve's wrist, says, "Try another one," and relaxes enough for Steve to push a second finger in.

"This okay?"

Bucky turns his mouth up in a smile that's closer to a sneer and moves against Steve's fingers like he's enjoying himself. "Another, go on."

Steve settles between Bucky's knees, other hand on his hip to settle himself as he adds a third finger, spurred on by the way Bucky's breath comes out heavier through his nose and the soft noises he makes. Steve works his fingers into the hot clutch of Bucky's body until he can feel a strain in his wrist and sweat running down Bucky's thighs.

"Okay, okay," Bucky says, teeth gritted. He's hard and flushed all over, skin practically glowing with sweat in the half-dark but still surprisingly cool. The heat sinks to Steve's core and makes their movements languid and more intimate, shared breaths and sweat and bodies. Bucky's leaking come all over his own stomach and the sheets are a mess of various fluids. No one told Steve that falling in love would be so gross, or that he wouldn't care.

"Steve," Bucky says. Steve gaze snaps up from where most of his fingers are buried inside Bucky and where his dick is going to be soon to the bobbing of Bucky's throat and the concern in his eyes. Bucky almost fell off a roof tonight. The awareness of possible tragedy brings Steve's need to the surface and makes every action, every feeling, more pertinent.

"Yeah." Steve withdraws his fingers. "Are you ready? Can I put it in?"

"Hold on, lay back down."

Steve does, unsure what to do with his obvious erection and feeling self-conscious about it until Bucky rolls a condom down him and strokes with the hand covered in lube. "God," Steve says, feeling too much at once. He turns into Bucky's body on instinct, chasing the texture of him, but then Bucky's taking his hand away and turning too so that his back is to Steve's chest and Steve's dick bumps against the swell of his ass.

"Yeah, like this. Better angle this way."

"You just don't want me looking at you."

Bucky laughs and reaches behind himself to pull at Steve's hip. "If we do it face-to-face, I'll come too fast."

"Yeah, wouldn't want that. It'd ruin the whole night."

"Right? And then we'd be stuck having to make conversation instead of screwing."

He pushes back in invitation and Steve bites into Bucky’s shoulder to muffle an embarrassing noise from his throat. The scene is familiar in that Bucky's done this between Steve's thighs, as close as they've come to penetration before Bucky put it on the table, no doubt spurred on by the threat of mortality and heat and whatever other invisible forces govern his reasoning.

Steve's hands shake with nerves and anticipation as he lines up, a tight fit that feels like a breach but has Bucky swearing and pushing back to meet him, sliding all the way in with Bucky's fingers bruising his hip. He takes a moment to adjust with his face pressed between Bucky's shoulder blades and mouth full of his hair. It's overwhelming for Steve, so he can only imagine how it feels for Bucky. He gets a hint from Bucky's expression when Bucky glances back over his shoulder, a bead of sweat running sideways across his forehead.

"Don't hold out on me now, Rogers. We already got this far."

"You're bossy as hell, anyone ever tell you that?"

The urge to kiss Bucky, to roll him over and screw him and kiss him comes over Steve while they lie there breathing heavy.

"Well, you got a big dick and it's about time you started using--"

Steve starts moving his hips. Bucky stops talking to make encouraging sounds that reverberate through his chest and filter into background noise to the slide of their bodies. It's messy and unpractised and even with the restricted angle Steve can barely control his jerky thrusts. Bucky moves back as Steve pushes his hips forward, sliding deeper with each thrust, close to coming with how tight Bucky is around him. Together they get a rhythm going that has Steve's balls tightening and Bucky shuddering with a gasp.

"Yeah, god, like that." Bucky draws his leg up to his chest and Steve's next thrust takes him deeper again. He keeps the rhythm up, wrapping an arm across Bucky's chest to pull him closer, spurred on by the litany of noises growing harsh and the electricity licking down his spine. Bucky is fully hard, dick leaking, dripping from the lube on Steve's palm as he strokes Bucky through his orgasm. The force of Bucky clenching around him has Steve coming so hard he has to shut his eyes against it.

Steve's breath come back eventually, after minutes spent with his face pressed into Bucky's back. His hand lifts from Bucky's softening erection without his permission and then he feels a tongue scraping across his palm, into the web of his fingers.

"Ugh," Bucky says, pressing Steve's hand to the sheet to get rid of the mess, "come and lube. Not that great a combination."

"I don't mind it."

"Yeah, but you're whipped."

Steve snorts but doesn't argue or protest, even when Bucky shifts away and Steve has to pull out sooner than he wants to. He's done and spent and left with the awkward task of disposing of the condom, but even when the adrenaline of the moment fades and he's left with pure adoration coursing through his bloodstream all he wants to do is slide back in. He can't stop touching Bucky, licking at the drying sweat on his shoulders, stroking along his back, touching his fingers to his scars and bruises and the jagged line on his thigh. Bucky hums in contentment, rolling onto his front to look at Steve, all stretched out, miles of skin and body heat.

"Hey," Steve says, drinking in the sight.

Bucky's face is half-hidden in the pillow but the fondness in his eyes is visible, and Steve can feel it. He could probably feel it from space. "Whatever," Bucky says. It's romantic enough for Steve, who ruins the moment by turning away to deal with the condom.

"Um, Buck?"

"Bin upstairs," Bucky says, more of a grunt than words. Steve vetoes pants for no other reason than he'd be taking them off when he gets back anyway, grabs a handful of tissues from the box next to the bed, cleans himself up as he takes the stairs and tosses it all in a trash bag left by the fridge.

Bucky's all but passed out when Steve climbs in next to him thirty seconds later. It's still too hot to cuddle but Steve couldn't care less and drapes himself across Bucky's back until Bucky groans and shifts onto his side.

"I'm not the little spoon," he says into Steve's neck.

"Buck, I got twenty pounds on you."

"You ever heard the saying 'size doesn't matter'?"

"No," Steve deadpans.

Bucky's shoulders shake in laughter that gets trapped between them with the heat. "You used to be so different."

It's so out of left field Steve has to take a few seconds to decipher it, which is hard to do with most of the things Bucky says after an orgasm.

"I'm taller now."

"I don't just mean the growth spurt and the gym membership and all your new friends. You seem different. Not so hellbent on taking everyone down. You woulda fought anyone."

Steve can't decide if it's a compliment and Bucky's tone gives nothing away, so he settles on a safe reply. "They're your friends too, if you want. They like you, too. Same as me."

Bucky huffs. "They're afraid of me. They think I'm gonna ruin you and turn you away from them."

Steve doesn't say, they should be. Doesn't say, you've already ruined me and you didn't even try. "Thor likes you. He's not afraid of you, but he believed that rumour about your family's connections to illegal weapons trade."

"Thor also thinks my name is Buddy."

Steve pulls back to look at him. "What?"

"Tony told him my name is Buddy, thought it was real funny. Thor’s English isn't that great, I feel bad about correcting him." Bucky yawns, not at all upset like Steve is at the way people treat him.

"Yeah, okay, they're jerks," Steve concedes. It's baffling to him, when he feels so much about Bucky, that everyone else doesn't feel it too. He presses his nose to the top of Bucky's head and inhales.

“I like you too, y’know. Even back then, I always thought you were pretty special.” Sleep creeps into Bucky’s voice and slurs his words, his mouth mashed into the pillow Steve’s head rests on. “Wanted to torture you until you liked me back. Figured it was easier to save you from a few assholes.”

A few moments pass in which they don't move and Bucky might've fallen asleep before Steve asks, "Is it too much? Being with me, I mean. Is everyone giving you a hard time about it?"

Bucky sighs softly. "Go to sleep, Steve."

"I'm serious, Buck."

"Be serious all over somebody else, 'm trying to sleep."

Steve doesn't push any more, but he holds Bucky close, clinging to him long enough that the heat sticks them together.

 

//

 

"That kid needs to die," Bucky says when Joffrey comes on screen. His eyes haven't left the laptop in three hours and his opinions have only grown in their vitriol, especially after Joffrey's scenes with Sansa. Bucky's soft spot for redheads is his worst kept secret.

Steve's been lying in the same position so long his neck is one big muscle cramp and his stomach rumbles hard enough to dislodge the laptop. "You have food, right?"

Bucky stretches, arms over his head. "There's some teriyaki beef jerky around here somewhere."

Steve asks, shutting his laptop, "But do you have any real food?"

Bucky leads the way to the kitchen, boxers slung low on his hips because they'd given up on staying dressed hours before, due to heat and what Bucky called easy access. Steve pulls on some pants because he still has boundaries, no matter how Bucky's influence has corrupted him.

The cupboards are practically empty after Bucky picks through them for a packet of spaghetti and a tin of sauce that he sets to heating on the stove. Even the fridge is bare save for a cardboard Pabst box and a half-empty bag of Cool Ranch Doritos. Steve refrains from saying anything but Bucky eyes him off, shoulders tense as he boils the water.

"What's that look for."

Steve crosses his arms and leans back against the counter. "Nothing." Bucky rolls his eyes and goes back to the food. Steve waits a beat, can't help himself, says, "Your dad's gone and he didn't leave you any food?"

Bucky shakes the packet of spaghetti. "We have food. This is food."

"Yeah, but," Steve starts, careful to keep the judgement out of his tone, "one packet of spaghetti doesn't last that long."

"I mostly survive on apathy and energy drinks anyway." As Bucky moves around the kitchen, the afternoon light plays across the series of marks down his side from hitting the roof, red and swollen, proof he's every bit as human and vulnerable as he likes to pretend he's not.

"Does this happen a lot? He just leaves you by yourself?"

Bucky forces a smile that doesn't reach his eyes as he upends the tin of sauce into a pot, his back a rigid line. "Sweet deal, right? No curfew, no overbearing parenting, free reign of the house to invite over whoever I like. No one cares if I come home late or sleep through school because no one's here to answer the phone."

"The teachers care," Steve says. Even as he says it he hears how stupid it sounds, even if it's the truth.

"Great, maybe I'll hit them up the next time our electricity gets cut off."

The water starts to boil over and Bucky dumps the spaghetti in, his movements jerky, annoyed. Steve's overstepped another unspoken boundary.

"Where is your dad?"

"Probably getting shot in a back alley drug deal." Bucky raises an eyebrow. Bitterness radiates off him, his planted feet like pillars sticking him to the earth, his teeth gritted. "Why, you gonna give him a piece of your mind?"

Steve let's his arms fall and glances away. He shouldn't argue with Bucky over this, over unfair situations, especially when he doesn't have the full story, but he can't help feeling the unfairness either.

"Buck, if you need anything--"

"Christ," Bucky says, low and hissed. "For a minute I thought you were gonna judge me for being poor, but I guess pity is a whole lot better."

Steve takes a step forward. He wants to grab Bucky by the shoulders and shake him until he stops biting down. "You think I'd judge you for being poor? My parents work so much I barely get to see them. I didn't take on an after school job because I'm a people-person, you know."

"Good for you." Bucky stirs the spaghetti with a white knuckled grip. "Must be real nice to have parents."

The force of his anger stuns Steve into silence. The two-foot gap between them feels miles wide with Bucky's defenses shutting him down and keeping him out of Steve's reach.

"It's not pity," Steve says, but it's almost lost under the sound of Bucky draining the spaghetti in the sink. Bucky acts like he hasn't heard him but Steve continues. "I care about you. I just wanna make sure you're okay." He half-expects Bucky to laugh in his face or protest becoming one of Steve's lost causes, but he doesn't. Bucky doesn't say anything as he finishes making lunch. Steve stands awkwardly for a minute before he starts opening cupboards at random, looking for plates or anything useful to do that isn't taking up space and pissing people off. He might've gotten too comfortable with people being impressed by him now, so it serves him right falling for the one guy who sees all of him and won't stand for less.

Bucky grabs plates from under the sink and loads them up, passing the first to Steve. "I'm okay. Now shut up and eat your pasta."

They lounge on the front porch shovelling food down while people pass by on the sidewalks and the sun trails in a lazy arc across the sky. Despite his earlier claims, Bucky goes back for seconds and loads up Steve's plate, too, and by the time they've finished, plates discarded and lethargic from the heat, he's got his feet in Steve's lap and his mood has evened out, looking content if not sweaty and mussed.

"You should come to my house," Steve says. The words are only a half-formed thought when they leave his mouth.

"Can't right now, napping." Bucky stretches out across the porch to emphasise his point.

"I mean more often. Have dinner at a house where you don't have to light the oven with two rocks and prayer."

Bucky digs his toes into Steve's full stomach and Steve groans. "Fancy. Why should I? What's in it for me?"

"Dinner," Steve says. He grabs Bucky's foot, fighting the urge to kiss it or bite it, or any of the other weird things that spring to mind unprovoked. He kneads his thumbs into the arches of Bucky's foot and Bucky squirms, kicks, lets out a yelp that startles them both. "Uh, sorry?"

"Fuck off," Bucky says, an embarrassed flush colouring his cheeks. Steve bites his own cheek trying not to laugh at the sight of Bucky losing his cool.

"You're ticklish," Steve says, needing to confirm it by voicing it out loud.

Bucky scowls, cheeks still red. "Don't tell anyone, it'll ruin my rep."

Last week Bucky handed out condoms and safe sex pamphlets in the school hallways at Mr. Pierce's request, as punishment for something, Steve assumes, winking at anyone who got within ten feet and ad-libbing his own sex tips. The fact that he's embarrassed about this is laughable. Steve grabs his foot again and squeezes while Bucky squirms and laughs until tears roll down his cheeks. He tries to wrench his feet out of Steve's grasp and kick him at the same time but Steve holds on, digging his fingers into the callused pads of Buckys feet just to hear him laugh. Eventually Bucky yells uncle and Steve gives in, letting his guard drop enough for Bucky to land a kick to his ribs.

"Ow." Steve clutches his side.

"Yeah," Bucky says, too busy gloating to save himself when Steve grabs his hips and drags him closer across the porch. Bucky tries kicking his legs out and Steve counters by rolling on top of him, pinning his arms to the floorboards.

Steve grins in triumph and Bucky scoffs like he's not impressed or turned on, despite what Steve can feel and how his hand drops to Steve's waistband. A noise behind them makes them both turn.

"Well," Natasha says, "this is about the gayest thing I've seen since Clint's experimental twink phase." She makes a face at Bucky that he mimics, lips pulled back in a humorless sneer. A greeting without context, at least none that Steve is aware of.

"Hi Natalia, so nice of you to interrupt." Bucky pushes himself up to sit and Steve follows, giving Natasha a hospitable smile to show no hard feelings despite the show of animosity she and Bucky exchange on a daily basis. In return, she gives Steve a once-over so leering he crosses his arms over his naked chest. "So sorry, we're fresh out of children whose dreams you like to eat."

Natasha shrugs, unoffended. "I'm not here for pleasure. Thor wants to know if you two are coming over tonight." She smiles, wicked and slow, adding, "Buddy."

"And you couldn't just text that?"

"I was in the neighborhood. So?"

Bucky shrugs, a careless nudge against Steve's shoulder. He's tense again, not looking at Steve or Natasha but staring out into the street like it's more interesting.

Steve chimes in. "I've got homework, so I'm gonna pass."

"Homework? For shame. Saturday nights are wasted on you." She kicks at Bucky's foot with the toe of her sneaker. "What about you, Grumpy Cat?"

"Well I was going to waste tonight on getting wasted." He feigns a smile that's mostly teeth, preening like he knows how cute he is. "Plus, I don't want to."

Natasha rolls her eyes. "Fine, be like that. Just know you're not going to make any friends by staying shut away in that dank hellhole of a room." She flips her curtain of hair over her shoulder as she leaves, already at the gate when Bucky shouts, "You said you loved my dank hole," loud enough for Natasha to hear and flip him off.

"She does," Bucky informs Steve, as if that proves it.

"I'll bet," Steve says. Each time he sees Natasha and Bucky together he's left with a sense of missing half the conversation, witnessing a friendship in action formed long ago that forces everyone else into the periphery. It might be sweet if their conversations weren't mostly insults.

"She's right, though. Homework is what homeroom is for."

"I don't have homework, I just didn't want to go if you weren't going to."

Bucky smiles for real this time like its shocked out of him, even if he's still staring out at the street and Steve can only glance at him in profile. If he stares long enough he might be able to hear Bucky's thoughts. "I must be getting predictable."

"I took my chances."

Bucky budges him again with his shoulder. "You're such a sap. I can't believe you lied, though. Doesn't that violate the oath you took as President of the Truth, Honesty and Sincerity Club?"

Bucky's making fun of him, but because Steve is completely gone on him he doesn't even mind. "They'll probably kick me out and make a big deal about it," he says, playing along. "The school newspaper headlines will read 'Least Sincere Guy Ever Publicly Shamed For Harmless Lie'."

"That's rough, Stevie. What's the Chastity Club gonna say when they find out what you did to me last night?"

Steve flushes so deeply he can feel it in his toes, his face on fire. Bucky's chin on his shoulder is soothingly cool and overstimulating all at once, Bucky's face and all the suggestion in his smile only inches away.

"They can mind their own business."

Steve has to swallow past the dryness in his throat. He knows about nervousness, how it manifests in the same ways as excitement. Sweaty palms, dilated pupils, increased heart rate. It happens most of the time he's around Bucky and any chance of being able to desensitize himself to it has gone out the window. At one time the only choices he had were to fight or to flee, but he's not twelve years old anymore, he doesn't have to fight his way out of every confrontation that gets his heart racing, and he's not going anywhere.

He kisses Bucky, because he's allowed to do that now, because he wants Bucky and because Bucky wants him back.

"Let's go inside," Steve says. It's no cooler inside than out but at least there's no audience.

Bucky groans. "I just got comfortable. Can't we just do it here?"

"No chance in hell," Steve says. "Let's go take a shower and use all the hot water like you do every time you're at my house."

"You know I do that because my hot water only works half the time, right? It's fifty-fifty shower or ice bath."

"Beats sitting out here baking in the sun." Steve pushes himself up, holding out a hand that Bucky ignores in favor of being as difficult as possible despite the heat in his eyes and all the lengths he’ll go to to get laid. Steve shrugs, stepping away, hands dropping to his waistband. "Suit yourself." He takes another step backwards towards the front door and pops the button on his pants, loosening them around his hips, making a show of it until Bucky groans again, yelling, "Fine," as he scrambles to his feet and pushes Steve through the doorway with his hands down Steve's pants. He's competitive about it, making it a fight to even get to the bathroom. Steve ends up dragging him in, enjoying it all the more when Bucky falls apart in his hands as the last of the hot water circles the drain.

 

//

 

"I really do have to get home," Steve says for probably the fourth time before he loses himself in the taste and feel of Bucky’s mouth again.

“So you keep saying.”

Bucky’s hands move in waves across Steve’s back, fingers dipping between the waistband of his slacks, pressure just light enough to keep Steve sitting in Bucky’s lap, afraid to break contact. They’ve been making out lazily for forty minutes since the first time Steve said he had to go, what started out as foreplay before they got distracted, making it as far as the living room before Bucky collapsed on the sofa in peaceful protest and pulled Steve with him. For all the practise Steve's had at using his mouth over the past few weeks, his jaw is starting to ache and the reality of how many hours they’ve spent cooped up in this house without braving the outside world is starting to set in.

“Ok, no, really.” He pulls back and Bucky makes a guttural noise that curls and tightens in Steve’s stomach, pulls his hands away as Steve climbs off him. The loss of contact makes moving even harder, not easier, a pull of gravity tethering him to the spot with his backpack in hand and his lips tingling.

Bucky’s expression, something pained too disappointed to look as smug as he usually does at making Steve lose his composure doesn’t make it easier, either.

“I can walk you home,” Bucky says. He moves to stand but Steve puts his hand out to stop him.

“No, don’t, it’s okay. I, um. If you do you know I’ll just invite you in and then we’ll start fooling around again except my parents are probably home, so. Stay. I mean, you should just--stay right here.”

The corners of Bucky’s mouth lift in amusement. If there was a time he couldn’t sway Steve with just a well-timed look, it’s a distant memory. “You’re pretty cute when you’re flustered, did you know that?”

“Don’t even start.”

“Start what? Get out here, I’m sick of looking at you.”

Steve rolls his eyes and shoulders his backpack. As soon as Bucky stops moving, hands dropping to his sides and smirk falling away, the levity stops, too. All the humour drains out of the room, sucked away to let in the heat.

Steve leans down and touches their foreheads together. “I’ll see you later, okay? Tomorrow.”

Bucky nods, for a split second looking like a lost child before his expression evens out. “Yeah, can’t miss any more school or they’ll kick me out.” The joke falls flat without any enthusiasm behind it. They don’t kiss goodbye, but when Steve finally gets to the door, Bucky stops him again. “Wait,” he says, “give me something.”

Steve pauses for the elaboration that doesn’t come. “Like what?”

“Something of yours.”

He pats down his pockets and finds only spare change, gum, and his phone. A search through the front pocket of his bag brings more of the same, loose paper and pens and house keys, until his hand closes around something he’d shoved in there months before and forgotten. It’s always heavier than he expects, compact, brass finish scuffed from the years, the insignia and initials almost worn smooth. Bucky takes it, flips open the lid.

“A compass.”

“It was my great-grandfather’s,” Steve says, the speech his own father gave when he presented to Steve about tradition and honoring the dead already rolling off his tongue before he stops himself. It should be in a museum somewhere, an actual piece of WWII history, not stuffed in the bottom of Steve’s school bag. He should’ve taken better care of it, but maybe Bucky will.

Bucky moves to hand it back, protest written all over his face, but Steve stops him.

“Hold onto it for me. I’ll get it back from you eventually.”

Bucky nods, satisfied. He slips the leather band from his wrist and ties it around Steve’s. “That you can keep.” He stands in the doorway while Steve takes the stairs, allowing himself a last look over his shoulder before he’s too far away to see Bucky at all.

When Steve gets home both cars are in the driveway. He heads straight to his room, unaccustomed to distant noise from people that aren’t right next to him. In the last two days his body has reoriented itself to the chill, despite the heat, and to noise, despite their relative isolation. He sets up at his desk, textbooks and laptop open, and his gaze drawn to the window, wondering if the sun had always set facing his room, or if that’s somehow changed too.

 

//

 

Bucky isn’t at school on Monday.

Classes keep Steve busy and he’s distracted enough by recaps of what he missed on the weekend that he goes through the whole day without making a big deal of it. Bucky misses school sometimes. It happens. These things are facts, a pattern of past behaviour that determines future action. Steve pays attention in class. He runs track and goes to work and he sends Bucky a text that doesn’t contain the words ‘love’ or ‘miss’ no matter how much they bounce around in his mouth trying to get out.

 

//

 

Bucky isn’t at school on Tuesday. By Wednesday, Steve’s texts are still unanswered and the two times he tried to call rang out to voice message. No one’s seen Bucky since the week before. This isn’t unusual. It happens.

Steve corners Natasha by her locker in a moment of casual insanity. She doesn’t look surprised to see him, but maybe surprise isn’t in her emotional repertoire.

“Whaddup, G-man.” She doesn’t look at him as she pulls books out of her locker.

“Have you seen him?”

“Seen who?”

Steve doesn’t have the patience for this, but he understands in the part of his brain not yet overrun with panic and possible disaster scenarios that not everyone is constantly thinking about Bucky.

“Bucky. He hasn’t been at school this week.”

She glances at her phone, fingers flying over the screen for several long seconds before she answers, tone clipped and uninterested, “Yeah, well, you know James.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, “I do, and this is weird. He’s not answering his phone.” People push past them to get to class and Steve steps closer, lowers his voice to keep the panic from creeping in. “Tell me what’s going on.”

“You know what he’s like.” Natasha snaps her locker shut and turns around, still not catching his eye. It sounds like a brush off but she hasn’t left yet. “He’ll turn up in a few days, he always does.”

Maybe that means something to her, but Steve is at a loss to explain how someone can just disappear, act like they don’t exist anymore, and how everyone else can accept that.

“Turn up from where? What does that mean?”

“Look, I don’t know how much he told you, if he even--” Natasha pauses, sighs.

“He can’t miss any more school. They’ll expel him.” Even to Steve it sounds like a desperate attempt at reason in the face of something unexplainable, but it’s all Steve’s got. Clearly he alone isn’t enough to keep Bucky there.

“Lucky he’s got a friend like me to hack into the administrative system and fudge his attendance record.” She grins at him, pleased with herself, but Steve feels like he’s been hit.

“Lucky,” he repeats. The word feels hollow in his mouth and he swallows it. “I’m going to his place after school. If you won’t tell me what’s going on, he will.”

He steps away from the lockers, already in motion with a plan of action forming in his mind when Natasha pulls him back in with a hand on his arm. “Steve. That’s not a good idea,” she says, not unkindly. “Just give him some time.”

She pats his arm, reassuring, but her expression is controlled and gives nothing away. Her hand slips away as the people close in around them and then she’s gone, too.

 

//

 

Steve ignores Natasha’s warning and twenty minutes after the last bell he’s walking up the steps to Bucky’s house, but Bucky isn’t there, either. Steve can handle school halls and the cafeteria with so many other bodies to distract him but here there are only reminders, jokes that come in threes. The shattered roof tiles spilled across the grass. Steps that creak underfoot, in danger of giving way under his weight. An eviction notice stapled to the front door that offers no resistance to Steve’s intrusion.

The slip of paper, government official yellow and personless, won’t make him leave any more than what it guards. The house is a mess of tipped over furniture and broken glass but underneath the detritus of scattered rage is the air of finality and absence, desertion more than random violence. It looks like the scene of a robbery but it doesn’t _feel_ like one, not in the same way Steve feels robbed. Everything he can recall from a weekend spent cocooned in this shell is still there, even if it’s in a different place, crunching and changing shape under his feet as he picks his way through the living room where he saw Bucky last and the kitchen that’s tainted with the image of Bucky making spaghetti in his underwear and the stairs to Bucky’s bedroom that creak under Steve’s weight but were silent that time Bucky dragged him down onto them and climbed into his lap, too impatient to make it to the bed, still dripping wet and stretched out from the shower.

Bucky’s bedroom is the same, but he isn’t there. The haze in Steve’s brain lifts at the sight of the place where Bucky’s canvasses should be--denial, whatever made him come in the first place and dragged him down here just to have his heart broken by a lack of something. Not denial: belief. It leaves him so suddenly he feels weak.

He collapses on Bucky’s bed. He breathes in the scents that linger on the sheets and imagines them warmed by body heat. It’s not enough. Belief doesn’t last long enough.

He presses his face into a pillow until he can’t remember any other sensations. When that doesn’t bring Bucky back or provide a reason he left, Steve goes around the room and touches things Bucky’s touched, the walls and the lightswitch and the staircase banisters and the stereo and the stack of books without a bookshelf, even if he has to track his fingerprints through dust to get to the memory of Bucky’s skin.

He turns the stereo on and feels the thumb print on the button like an electric shock. Soft music spills from the speakers, piano and percussion and a man’s voice singing about oceans, the same song that was playing the last time Steve came in. The song builds until it fills the room, minutes or hours of Steve standing with his thumb on the power button until the red light-up number changes and another voice replaces the first one.

Weariness comes over him again. He’s powerless to the feeling and sits back down, back against the wall between the dresser and the table the stereo rests on, feeling smaller than his size. He has to squeeze in and it’s not comfortable, but he waits there, listening with the intensity he pays when Bucky whispers to him in the dark, until the cd loops back around with an archaic whir, until he’s heard the whole thing.

He takes the cd with him when he goes, as well as a sweater Bucky left behind that was too big for him anyway.

 

//

 

“I need you to trace a number for me.”

Tony smiles, shark-like. “I knew you’d come to me eventually.” His unapologetic self-interest is a refreshing contrast to the way other people have started to treat Steve like he’s losing his mind. Natasha is avoiding him like Steve suspects she was doing from the start. People whose names he learned out of courtesy give him a wide berth.

“Just tell me you’ll do it.” The piece of paper with Bucky’s cell number scrawled on it crumples in his palm, the ink smudged from sweat. Tony eyes it cautiously as he takes it, lifting up his Ray Bans to take Steve in.

“Nice sweater, Freddy. Look, no guarantees, all right? I can track a cell but sometimes the owner doesn’t want to be found, and if they don’t you probably won’t want to know where they are, you know?”

Steve fights the urge to snatch the paper back, so far at the end of his rope it just might snap, him with it.

Tony continues, “But you’ve probably been lectured enough by now. I’ll do it, for you Steve, because you’re a friend. And because Barnes is ok, I guess. He’s got some style.”

Tony is a lot of things but he’s capable and he cares about what people, the right people in his eyes, think of him, enough that he might actually do something selfless, even if it’s for the wrong reasons. It’s the deciding factor in having Tony do this. Plus, all his other options aren’t talking to him right now.

“Thanks,” Steve says, and walks away before he can regret it.

 

//

 

Hours fly in spurts and days pass in a crawl that feels like slow decay without the promise of rebirth. One minute Steve is stealing glances at a blank tennis court wall while his coach yells for him to pick up the pace and the next he’s restocking fridges, crushing a carton of milk in his hand while his chest tightens in the cold air, forgetting how to do something as simple as breathe.

More often than not he winds up in Bucky’s bedroom, pulled along on autopilot, relearning each step as he goes. The play count on Bucky’s cd creeps into the hundreds. He sends texts that get no reply. He sits on the roof for lack of anything better to do and falls asleep on Bucky’s bed, waiting.

 

//

 

**_You need to change your sheets. They_ **  
**_smell like us and it’s making me sad._ **

**_Where are you_ **

**_Just tell me where you are. Please._ **

**_I stole one of your sweaters and you’re_ **  
**_not getting it back until you come home._ **

**_Did you know stars are millions of years old and by the_ **  
**_time the light makes it to us they’re already dead? You_ **  
**_probably knew that already. I’d know that if you told me_ **  
**_but you never did._ **

**_If you need space I understand but you should’ve told_ **  
**_me instead of just leaving unless it wasn’t your choice_ **  
**_in that case i’m sorry_ **

**_Come back?_**

**_If you won’t tell me where you are can you_ **  
**_at least tell me when you’re coming back_ **

**_What if someone comes to pack up all of your things and_ **  
**_sell the house then where will I go to feel sad that you’re_ **  
**_not here_ **

**_We’ll have to find new places to have sex. Just not my_ **  
**_parents bedroom that wasn’t funny I still can’t believe_ **  
**_you suggested that._ **

**_I won’t let them take any of your stuff I promise_ **

 

//

 

Tony calls him on what might be a Sunday afternoon and recites an address.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m always sure.”

“That can’t be right.”

“Take it or leave it, chuckles.”

Steve tears apart the bedroom looking for the phone. When he’s finished the room looks no better than the rest of the house and he feels sick to his stomach. The phone wont turn on because it ran out of battery days ago and he can’t find the charger so he just sits on the floor staring at it in his hand and feeling too many things at once with no plan of action against the insurmountable proof that Bucky isn’t here and Steve can’t get him back. It wasn’t real to him until he found it lying under a pile of clothes with a bag of teriyaki beef jerky strips. Denial does strange things to a person.

He’s still clutching the phone in his hand when he walks back to his own house, turning down the wrong streets and losing his way. More than once he gets turned around in the direction he came from before he remembers there’s nothing that way. Even when he doesn’t try his body still points him to Bucky, like he’s been reoriented. Or maybe everything else was several degrees off and with Bucky he’s finally going in the right direction.

Natasha’s lying on his front lawn when he gets there. His shadow falls across her where she’s dozing on her back, one earbud in and the other tangled in her hair, shirt ridden up to expose her stomach. Her eyes snap open but she doesn’t fix her shirt, and maybe it’s intentional then, her way of levelling the playing field. A truce or something.

“You look lost, comrade.” Her eyes sparkle in amusement that’s as cryptic to Steve as most of the languages she speaks.

“I gave away my compass.” It isn’t until she says it that he realises it’s true, feeling loss, feeling lost. It takes him a week without Bucky to even find the words. “I don’t know what to do.”

Natasha stands and dusts grass off her clothes. “What Bucky would do: get drunk.”

 

//

 

They walk to the park in silence relative to their footfalls on the sidewalk and the sounds of small city life following them. The playgrounds should be full on what Natasha assures Steve is a Sunday afternoon, but the heat keeps people indoors, turns them slothful and irritated and unseen. Steve’s sweating through his layers, feeling overheated to the point of feverish, but taking them off would mean risking exposing himself and losing the feeling of wearing Bucky on his skin. Natasha pulls a bottle from her bag when they’re completely alone. She doesn’t say where she got it and Steve doesn’t ask, just sips when she hands it over and leans against the swing set while Natasha sits.

“I wasn’t lying when I said he’ll be okay.”

“You didn’t tell me he was gone. That’s as good as lying.” Steve chews his lip, not for the first time wondering what he’s doing, why he’s here and what he’s going to get from it.

Natasha makes a sound like she’s offended but even that sounds insincere. “If he didn’t tell you, why do you think I should?”

“What can you tell me?”

“That his dad is an asshole, which you’d know if you met him, and probably the sole reason you haven’t.” The next swig she takes doesn’t mask the bitterness in her voice.

“I’m getting that. What else?”

“This always happens. He goes out of town and takes James with him. Sometimes for a weekend, other times longer, depending on what he’s going for and how long the money lasts. Last summer James was gone for two months, and he calls me up from Santa Fe to tell me he’s been working the door of some nightclub owned by the Canta Ranas and slinging cocktails to their old ladies. That’s the Mexican mob, by the way.”

Steve pauses, disbelief making him stumble, alcohol making him stupid. “You’re making this up.”

“You’ve seen the scar on his thigh, right?” Steve nods. “Yeah, he got stabbed in Brooklyn and I had to take him to the hospital. Lucky I was already there, visiting an aunt, because he was bleeding out on the sidewalk.”

Steve steps away from the swing and his head spins, the world tilting on its axis. The more he learns the less he understands, but if he could just talk to Bucky, it would all make sense again. “Bucky is seventeen.”

Natasha shrugs, expression humorless and dark. “And soon he’ll be eighteen and his dad won’t be able to drag him across the country. Legally, anyway.”

“That’s not fair to him.” Anger and the urge to lash out fill his empty stomach, but at what he isn’t sure.

“I agree with you. But Steve, if you’re trying to wage battle against all the horrible forces in James’s life, the first person you’ll be going up against is him.” There’s probably some truth to Natasha’s words, but Steve can’t hear it through the rushing in his ears and the feeling of utter uselessness. “You can’t stop bad things from happening to people. Everyone has their shit and James is dealing with his the way he always has: quietly and by himself.” A breeze picks up and throws her hair around, auburn and shining in the late afternoon sun.

“Is that why you brought me out here, to tell me to just get over it?”

“Call me altruistic, but I’m trying to get you to understand so you don’t make an idiot out of yourself by falling for someone you don’t know, who’s probably just going to end up hurting you and not even realize. I know, I’m a saint.”

Too late, Steve doesn’t say. “I do know him. I know he’s not cruel and he wouldn’t hurt me unless he was trying to protect me.” Or himself, a voice in the back of his mind supplies.

“Yeah, he’s a real sweetheart,” Natasha says, rolling her eyes. Steve is starting to read her, the downward slope of her mouth, her guarded body language, and can almost appreciate how carefully crafted her protections are. “I get that you care about him, but trust me, he’s not a mystery that needs solving. He’s not a bad person but he doesn’t tend to hang onto people without a reason.”

Steve tenses. The alcohol makes him more sensitive than an open wound when he was already halfway there sober. No matter how rational she sounds, Steve can’t erase Bucky’s voice in his ear and all the truth behind his words, the slide of their bodies in sweltering darkness, the punches Bucky’s taken for him and the years they lost like spare change through stupidity and cowardice.

Natasha continues, “I’m telling you this because he cares about you and it’s changed him, he’s, like, insufferable to be around now. He’s trying to be a better person or whatever. Before he left he mentioned you, told me to make sure you’re okay while he’s gone.”

She catches his gaze, laughs, and glances away, but not before he sees her eyes, wet with anger and disappointment in herself. “I suck, I know.”

Steve’s chest loosens at the moment of honesty and he sits down on the swing beside her, feet scraping tracks in the dirt. He reaches out to rub Natasha’s back, a small comfort he can offer after being too caught up in himself to notice anyone else. She doesn’t lean into the touch but she doesn’t pull away either. “You’re a good friend. That’s all that matters to me.”

“I’m supposed to be comforting you.” She wipes her eyes and laughs. After a second Steve watches her mask slip back on effortlessly. “Can you still see properly?”

“Um.” Steve blinks a few times. “Sort of?”

“Great, have another drink.”

He takes the offered bottle even though his buzz has mostly worn off and the taste is acrid on his tongue.

Natasha’s phone rings and breaks the silence. She answers with a murmured, “Hey. You good? Everything alright?” She pauses, and Steve turns away, tuning out the tinny voice that spills into the air. He stands to leave, to give her some privacy, be alone with his thoughts while he sobers up, when Natasha continues, “Cool, hang on,” and holds the phone out to him. When he doesn’t take it she says, a smile playing on her lips, eyes shining, “It’s for you.”

Steve takes the phone as her smile grows wider. “Hello?”

“Steve?”

“Bucky?”

Relief hits Steve, so strong he has to sit back down. “God, Bucky.”

“Hey Steve.” Bucky’s voice washes over him, warm and comforting. It punctuates through the weight of loneliness and guilt Steve’s been carrying around like armor. Even though Bucky sounds different, not quite his cocky self, it’s more than Steve let himself hope for. “Did you miss me, punk?”

“Of course I did. Jerk.” Steve rolls his eyes. Sounds carry over the line, the background noise of music and voices. “Where are you right now?”

“A bar somewhere in New Mexico, I think. I stopped counting state lines after five.” His voice drops just low enough that Steve can still hear it as he continues, “I’m sorry if I freaked you out. I just thought it would be easier than saying goodbye. It’s just--I’m no good at making promises.”

Steve swallows past the lump in his throat. “You could’ve at least taken your phone.”

“I had to pack pretty fast.”

“All your paintings are gone.”

“We needed the money. You know how it is.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, meaning no. No he doesn’t know. No, it’s not fair that Bucky is halfway across the country when he should be here. “When are you coming back?”

“Steve,” Bucky says, a sigh.

“You’re coming back, right?” Steve can’t help how desperate he sounds, can’t stop himself. “This place isn’t the same without you. Everybody misses you. I think I’m going crazy because I wake up and forget you’re not here with me. Everyone’s avoiding me because they think I’m crazy, too.”

Bucky laughs and the line fills up with static. “It’s been a week.”

Steve has a moment of panic thinking he’s given too much away and Bucky might brush him off because Steve doesn’t mean as much to him as he does to Steve, despite what Natasha said, despite the leather band around his wrist.

“I know that.” Steve says, as Bucky says, “I knew you’d be lost without me. You’ve remembered to shower right?” Steve lets out the breath he’d been holding. “Can’t stop thinking about you, though. Keep having the same dream about you. Must be my subconscious trying to tell me something.”

“Must be a good dream.” Steve’s face heats up at the memory of the other dreams Bucky’s shared with him, and glances over to Natasha, who’s thirty yards away and doing handstands in the grass under the park lights. If it’s anything like the dreams Steve has about Bucky, no one else needs to overhear.

“Yeah, but reality is better. Listen, Steve, I gotta go. I’ll call when I can. Just take care of yourself, okay? Keep your head down, don’t do anything too stupid.”

“I can’t, you took all the stupid with you.”

Bucky huffs another laugh. He’s already sounding clearer, more like himself. “I’ll see you soon?”

“Yeah. See you soon.”

He stays on the line until Bucky disconnects, feeling hollow but no longer so desperate.

 

//

 

He dreams that night of fishing Bucky out of the water, pulling him into the boat in a tangle of net and shells and empty soda cans. His face is the same and his hair is long but his legs are stuck together and covered in dark scales that travel over his torso and down his arms. As Steve watches, Bucky’s lips turn blue. He’s shivering but not moving, he won’t wake up even though his scales turn to ice. Steve tries to warm him with body heat, relenting only when Bucky’s scales turn to ice and his skin grows too cold for Steve to hold onto. In the water Bucky comes back to life, circling the boat in the invisible slipstream current, but he looks unrecognizable and when he opens his mouth to speak no sound comes out of mouth. Steve wakes up slowly and the feeling of residual unease doesn’t leave him for days.

Bucky doesn’t come back, not the next day or the day after, but time still passes. Steve goes to class all week, spends the next weekend buried in homework, stocks shelves and rings up prescriptions at the drugstore, turns his downtime into training with Sam that leaves him too exhausted to miss anyone, until he’s just like everybody else trying to live for themselves and not for anyone else.

At the end of each day, Bucky’s house is still empty, idling away time until he returns or it gets sold or torn down. Another week passes, another. Bucky doesn’t come back.

Steve starts collecting things sometime during the third week. He has all these memories and nothing tangible to attach them to. At first he takes clothes, most of Bucky’s wardrobe which is still only barely enough to fill the small suitcase Steve hides under his bed frame. He gets tired of having to walk to Bucky’s house just to remember his smell so he takes the bedsheets and the pillowcases, too. He packs up Bucky’s paints and spray cans because he’s going to need them when he gets back; he probably won’t need most of the things Steve takes--cracked vinyl records, dirty magazines, broken guitar strings without a guitar, the collection of dog-eared Russian classics, the cd player, a shoebox full of jewellery and a few faded photographs of Bucky as a child with a woman who has kind eyes and Bucky’s heart-shaped face--at least not as much as Steve needs them. This way they’re not left exposed for anyone else to take or for time and heat to ruin.

He takes everything of value save for the wardrobe and the mattresses, left only for practical reasons, and clears out the rest, all the detritus of condom wrappers and half-eaten bags of chips and fraying brushes that was Bucky’s life before. He didn’t seem to take much with him, but there really wasn’t that much to take. Now it’s all at Steve’s house, waiting. He’s turned his bedroom into a transit lounge.

“This probably isn’t as healthy as you think it is,” Sam says when he sees what Steve’s bedroom has become, but he helps push the furniture around to hide the accumulation of stuff.

Steve shrugs. “No one said I couldn’t.”

“That’s probably the reason it took you this long to do it,” Sam says, “you didn’t know it was an option.”

Back at Bucky’s, Steve strips the bedroom skeletal. He sweeps the rest of the house of broken glass and splintered wood, rights the upturned furniture, scrubs the kitchen bare, empties the fridge and cupboards, turns the water valves off in the bathroom so the taps don’t leak, boards up the busted windows with scrap plywood. He leaves the other bedrooms untouched for fear of what he might find and someone Bucky mentioned once named Bluebeard. After all that, another weeks goes by. The heat sticks around, unshakeable, and Bucky doesn’t come back.

 

//

 

Steve is in the process of combing through his negatives as they dry, still images of landscapes and early morning thunderstorms and the shadowed profiles of whoever happened to be near him and his camera at the time, when he comes across a series of photos he doesn’t recognise. They’re nothing more than shapes in the darkness, a person maybe, the slope of a shoulder, the curve of a bent knee. He develops them all, not just the few he’d taken for class, the curiosity of it burning a need in him the way the daylight burns his eyes when he emerges from the darkroom back into the classroom.

It’s after five, the only time he could manage for developing, and no one else is around. When he comes back early the next morning it’s to find Miss Carter at her desk, waiting for him with a stack of prints in front of her. His prints. She looks like something from a dream, hair falling around her shoulders in waves that frame her face and her lips a vibrant red, like a living photograph beyond what Steve’s imagination could conjure. He catches himself staring more at her than his photos.

“Good morning, miss,” he says, when the anticipation of whatever she’s about to say builds too much for him to take. If he feels anything watching her cock an eyebrow and skim through the photos, he tells himself it’s because he’s lonely, because Bucky isn’t there, because it’s _Miss Carter_ and everyone feels something around Miss Carter. Even Natasha, who’s an admitted Kinsey zero to anyone who asks, but infinitely more complicated and truthful after several drinks.

“I took the liberty,” Miss Carter says, “I hope you don’t mind.”

Steve can’t help fidget under her gaze, kind as it is, and adjusts his bag strap for something to do, clears his throat. “Not at all. I haven’t had a chance to look at them, so they might not be any good.”

Miss Carter gives him a smile that accuses him of false modesty as she walks around the desk. “They’re actually quite impressive. The composition, the perspective, the contrast, all very well done. Some of them, however.” She places them on the desk, swiping them across until they’re spread out like a fan, and Steve tracks the movement of each until his eyes settle on the ones he doesn’t remember taking and he feels the room start to spin from the sudden loss of blood to his brain. Miss Carter continues, “While I have to admit the artistic merit isn’t lost on me, I wouldn’t say they’re entirely appropriate for class.”

The reason Steve doesn’t remember taking these photos is because he’s in them. His shoulder, his legs tangled up in Bucky’s sheets, his skin peppered with various fluids that are thankfully unrecognizable due to bad lighting and his shoddy attempt at exposure. He’s completely naked in the photos, completely unaware of the camera Bucky trained on him, looking like he’s asleep or close to it, an expression on his face that Steve remembers he couldn’t shake after Bucky rimmed him until he cried. The small mercy is that he’s on his side, covered in blanket and angled so that nothing is showing.

If it was anyone else, it might be considered tasteful, but Steve feels mortified, and embarrassed, and speechless, and would gladly jump in if the ground opened up beneath him, and an entire list of things he can’t name. His face is on fire, but at least he’s not in danger of fainting from shock, although it might be an easier way to backtrack out of this situation. When he glances up at Miss Carter, she’s pressing her lips together in a smirk like she’s too British and proper to laugh when Steve is clearly in pain, wounded-animal levels of pain, take him out back and put him out of his misery kind of pain.

“I don’t know how these-- my friend, I told him not to, I had no idea he-- I’m so sorry, I’ll replace the film--” Even though he’s only digging himself a deeper hole, Steve can’t help the words falling out of his mouth.

Eventually Peggy stops him with a hand on his arm. “Well, I suppose it’s a good thing no one saw them, then.” Steve nods dumbly as she takes a seat behind her desk, as composed as she always is. “Besides, anyone who’s ever spoken to James Barnes wouldn’t be surprised that he would do this, and I would urge you in the future not to lend him school property.”

Steve nods again. “Of course.” He starts gathering up the photos, waiting for a final punishment that doesn’t come. “Um, thank you.” He’s already backing away towards the door while Miss Carter organizes the files in front of her, seeming to have already lost interest.

“Oh, for opening the classroom early for you to collect your prints?” She smiles innocently at him. “It’s no problem. I look forward to seeing them at the end of term. Have a good day, now, Mr Rogers.”

Steve manages not to drop any of the photos on his way out, a Herculean feat with how he’s shaken, still in shock probably, ready to find Bucky and yell at him, or more likely be laughed at some more, before he remembers. Bucky isn’t there, and Steve feels the fight and even the embarrassment leave him in a full-body wave.

He’s careful with the photos when he puts them in his bag, turning from some dirty joke into more things to add to the piles in his room.

 

//

 

The day Bucky comes back is the day the heat wave breaks. A storm rips its way through the city, turning asphalt into spitting oil and power lines hissing as the rain comes down, running rivers through the streets, lightning splitting the sky open. Steve watches it through his bedroom window until a figure obscures the view and the window opens. Bucky falls through, bringing in the drizzle of rain and the sound of it lashing against the sides of the house. Steve can’t be sure it’s not a dream, but he pulls back the covers anyway and moves over to the side of the bed as Bucky drips rainwater across the floor. He smells real, he has a real presence, the way the bed dips with his weight feels real. His hair hangs lank and matted over his face, skin wet when Steve brushes it out of his eyes. The dampness spreading from his clothes to Steve’s side of the bed is definitely real. The only thing that doesn’t feel real is Steve, emotionally numb from shock or loneliness or both.

“Hey Steve,” Bucky says, finally. He looks thinner, tanned, lack of sleep carving bruises under his eyes. Steve buries his face in Bucky’s neck instead of trying to make words, crushes Bucky to him until Bucky hugs back, until they’re both soaked and Steve pulls away and orders him to strip.

Physically he doesn’t look much worse for wear but he’s quiet the whole time and when Steve pulls him back in he’s shivering.

“I think I dreamed about this,” Bucky says, breathed into the space shared between them. “I was drowning. You tried to save me.”

All the emotion Steve hasn’t felt since Bucky left threatens to choke him. “Me too,” he croaks out. He kisses Bucky’s hair and tastes seawater, salt on his skin, the ocean in his mouth. Dreams were never so good. Steve could’ve done a thousand stupid things to bring Bucky back and all he had to do was wait for him to come back on his own.

Steve has always been the only one that needs saving.

“I missed you so much, you have no idea.” Bucky kisses him like he’s dying, hands everywhere, skin on skin. Steve traces over his legs and arms and torso to find him human and alive.

“Me too,” Steve says again, feeling like it’s ripped from him, out of all the awful places he couldn’t fill by himself. “If you ever do that again I’ll come after you myself.”

“I’m never going anywhere,” Bucky says. It sounds like the promises he said he couldn’t make but Steve doesn’t care, so grateful it’s hard to feel anything like cautious or wary or angry. Bucky presses them both together and Steve feels full. “I’m staying right here.”

“Damn straight.”

In the morning the rain has finished with them and left, but Bucky is still there.

 

//

 

He’s missed so many weeks of school already, Bucky says, that one more day can’t hurt, and he falls back asleep. Steve gives him a generous four hours to hog the covers before he kicks Bucky out of bed and pushes him down the hall to the shower. He complains loudly about the built-in smell of car-sweat and beer that’s now enveloped in the sheets until the sound of rushing water drowns him out, but then he climbs back into bed and the newly vacated cocoon of Bucky’s warmth.

He’s missed it too much for anyone else to know. Only Bucky, who stands in the doorway twenty minutes later, towel around his waist, hip cocked against the frame, skin tinged pink. He looks refreshed but he’s scowling. “If I’m not allowed to sleep all day, Rogers, neither are you.”

Steve uncovers a triangle of bedding in invitation. “Wasn’t even thinking of it.”

When Bucky makes his way back over, he moves with slow resignation, not the pent up directed energy Steve remembers. He keeps his towel hitched up with one hand and his mouth set in a line. Even his shoulders are hunched, gravity weighing him down as the mattress dips to accommodate him.

Steve shuffles up behind him to close the distance and lays his forehead between Bucky’s shoulderblades.

“This probably isn’t the reunion you were hoping for, huh,” Bucky says, voice straining with the words.

“You’re here. What else could I hope for?”

Steve gets an arm around Bucky’s chest, moving slow so not to startle him, pulling Bucky back into him when he meets no resistance. Bucky’s heart beats steadily under Steve’s palm and he smells of Steve’s body wash, so clean Steve wouldn’t recognize him with eyes closed if not for the way he feels, cooler than the temperature allows, if not for the way his breath comes out heavy and the crack of his fingers in the frigid silence. He’s a product of colder seasons.

Bucky’s hand wraps around his, thumb against the leather strap on Steve’s wrist. “Are these my sheets?”

“Um, yeah,” Steve says to Bucky’s spine. “I washed them. Also, the rest of your stuff is here.”

“I can see that.” Bucky nods to the stack of his books taking up half of Steve’s desk. “If this is your way of asking me to move in with you, you should’ve moved out of your parents’ house, first. Also, it’s not very subtle.”

“Sorry,” Steve says, trying not to laugh at the irony of Bucky schooling him in subtlety. “Thought we might try going steady first. See, it’s this new thing where we acknowledge that we’re dating and neither of us disappears for a month and a half without telling the other person.”

Bucky exhales what sounds like an embarrassed laugh, ribcage jumping. “Am I ever going to live this down?”

“No.”

“Well, since you’re holding all my stuff ransom, I’m going to have to say yes.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Steve lets him go to move off the bed, tugging on Bucky’s arm to get him up, too. “C’mon, get dressed. We’ve got years of dating to catch up on.” As he stands Bucky latches onto his arm just to bring him back down and press their lips together. Steve sighs into the kiss and closes his eyes against the rush of delayed longing.

“Yeah,” Bucky says, smiling as he pulls back, “okay.”


End file.
